Race realist, referring to this post:
Outstanding post. Even with explaining your views on the matter, baseless claims will still be made as to why you’re a race-realist.
This is where I have been coming from since Day One. I founded a movement called Liberal Race Realism, but it was a complete flop due to as the Marxists would say the contradictions. But then I started the Alternative Left, which in a lot of ways is just the same thing except expanded.
I have long held that we on the Left need to deal with the reality of race and come up with some sort of Left project that takes into account the reality of race. The idea that race realism kills liberalism and the Left is nonsense. Liberalism and the Left can cope with any factual reality, including the reality of race. Supposedly it will be fatal because we believe everyone is equal, but most on the Left have never held that everyone is equal anyway, as that is an insane position. And in general most of the Left has not created complete equality, only relative equality. A lot of us are just for de jure equality or equality before the law and equality of opportunity.
The Left can’t keep on screaming that there’s no such thing as race forever.
But I also believe that if the belief in race ever becomes more common, everyone will go to the Right is unfounded. I know a number of good liberal people who believe in race realism. I even knew a Communist who believed in it. You put your average White liberal behind closed doors and put a few drinks in him, and a lot of times the Inner Race Realist comes out.
I say this because I have converted some people to facets of race realism, and they didn’t change their ideology one bit. In particular the race-IQ thing will never fly because most people hate the idea of IQ. It will be hard to get a population that hates IQ to care about the race-IQ facts.
There are some people who never knew about the facts of the Black-White IQ gap until I told them a few years ago. These were very intelligent Whites aged 45 or so.
RL: “Yes, Blacks score 15 points lower than Whites on IQ tests. Blacks are just not as smart as Whites, at least at the moment.”
45 year old liberal: Funny half smile that is hard to describe like he is hearing some odd fact. “Really? I never knew that.”
RL: “Yep it’s been well known forever, and further the tests are not biased, and IQ tests are a good measure of intelligence.’
45 year old liberal: Gets a look on his face like he’s sort of known it all along. “Well, of course. Of course they’re not as smart. That’s obvious. Anyone knows that. It’s common sense.
Then the conversation degenerates into a “Yeah, but so what” discussion where this person basically says:
“Who cares if they score lower?…Who cares about IQ anyway?…Screw IQ tests…Screw IQ…Everyone hates IQ scores, and no one likes those tests…No one cares what your IQ is, and in fact most people are angry if you tell them.”
Then on to whether the tests really measure intelligence or not, and he argues that they probably don’t.
Bottom line is even presented with the facts of race, most people don’t really change their views:
About the Black-White IQ gap: “So? Who cares? So they score lower. Big deal. Why is this important?”
About IQ and IQ tests in general: “The Hell with IQ. Nobody wants to talk about IQ, you can’t talk about it, everyone hates it, no one cares about it.”
About validity of IQ tests: “Well, who says those tests even measure intelligence anyway. There are different types of intelligence. I doubt if they really measure intelligence. Anyway, who cares about any of this?”
I think both sides are way too worried about this stuff. The Left is probably overreacting by shouting this stuff down. The Right is wrong that everyone will go rightwing and the Left will die once they learn the facts of race. Most people probably know about the reality of race on some intuitive level anyway, and even presented with race realist facts which they accept, they don’t seem to change their views.
Bottom line is most people do not care about race realism. It is considered to be sort of smarmy, slimy, disreputable and mean subject, and most people “just don’t want to go there.” Even when they know the facts, they shrug their shoulders. Most people hate the idea of IQ and never want to discuss it. At the end of the day, even if more people believe in the reality of race, I doubt if it would change the political landscape much. Both sides seem to be placing way too much importance on this stuff, while the guy next door basically does not give a damn about it anyway.
